BEYOND GOO-GOO-GA-GA!

Moms and dads need to switch from baby talk to parentese if they want their tot to learn language faster

- LESEGO SEOKWANG

CAN you smile for mommy? Yes, you c-a-a-a-n. Yes, you c-a-a-a-n. What a clever girl you are! Such a clever girl! Who’s a clever girl? You are! Yes, you are!”

If that’s the way you speak to your baby, consider yourself fluent in parentese and give yourself a resounding pat on the back.

Parentese is the language of speaking to babies – a method of using exaggeration, repetition and high-pitched delivery to communicate with your little ones.

It involves using real words instead of the coochie-coo, goo-goo-ga-ga version of infant-speak – and according to a new scientific study, it’s the best thing you can do to aid the development of your baby’s vocabulary.

The study, conducted by the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-Labs) at the University of Washington in the USA, examined how coaching parents in the value of parentese has a profound effect on children’s development.

The researchers involved 71 families, 48 of which were taught how to speak parentese to their children. By the age of 18 months, the babies who’d listened to parentese had a 100-word vocabulary. In comparison, the babies who didn’t hear parentese had an arsenal of 60 words.

“We now think parentese works because it’s a social hook for the baby brain – its high pitch and slower tempo are socially engaging and invite the baby to respond,” says Patricia Kuhl, I-Labs’ co-director and professor of speech and hearing sciences.

Coaching parents gave them a measurement tool, “almost like a Fitbit for parentese”, says Naja Ferjan Ramirez, an assistant professor of linguistics at Washington University.

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS PARENTESE?